The 50 Worst Sex Scenes of All Time

The 50 Worst Sex Scenes in Cinema

10. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

If you’ve ever been to an orgy, you know it can be a fun yet awkward, ridiculous affair. In fact, the awkward ridiculousness is exactly what makes it fun, which is why this particular orgy is no fun at all. It looks as if it were choreographed by Larry Flynt — all nuance and spontaneity has been carefully extracted and destroyed, each pair or threesome is either thrusting mechanically or rubbing each other in slow, congruous circles. It’s enough to drive even Tom Cruise to antidepressants, L. Rob Hubbard be damned. — Will Doig

9. Body of Evidence (1993)

This sex scene has two parts: the dumb part, and the invisible part. The dumb part features Madonna, with the theatrical precision we’ve come to know her for, tying up and then pouring hot wax on Willem Defoe while making a sexy face. Defoe gamely acts like he’s in pain — but not too much pain — as this cliché of an S&M scenario unfolds. Then the camera moves behind a scrim, and we see mostly darkness for a minute and a half, while Madonna breathes like a woman in the throes of mild amusement. — Will Doig

8. Killing Me Softly (2002)

If she’d actually asphyxiated, this scene might have had legs. As it stands, Heather Graham sounds like an asthma attack and looks like a tree the morning after Halloween. It’s a true "what the hell were they thinking" gem, the kind only contained within movies in which "a woman faces deadly consequences for abandoning her loving relationship with her boyfriend to pursue exciting sexual scenarios with a mysterious celebrity mountaineer" (via IMDb). — Will Doig

7. Miami Vice (2006)

It starts off so well . . . jetting fast across the open blue Caribbean in a high-powered drug dealer speedboat, blasting that Moby song featuring Patti LaBelle that all the drug dealers like, a quick round of Mojitos at a cool harbor bar in Havana, a little dancing and then…sad, gloomy sex. Why the conjunctivitis-y teardrop, Gong Li? Is it because Colin Farrell is so very, very greezy? Is his icky stubble giving you razor burn? Is it that terrible song on the soundtrack? What happened to Moby? Or maybe it’s just that normally you’re really hot and this sex scene is about as boring as — well, that sex scene between Jamie Foxx and Naomie Harris a little earlier in the movie, which at least had the benefit of some actor-ly chemistry. But don’t worry, Gong Li. You’ve only got about another hour to go before the end of the movie. Hoo-boy . . . on the other hand, cry me a river. — Andrew Osborne

6. Color of Night (1994)

"Erotic thrillers" are usually neither erotic nor thrilling, and despite being awarded the prestigious Maxim magazine award for the Hottest Sex Scene ever committed to celluloid, Color of Night is a prime example. Here we have Bruce Willis as a psychologist who develops color blindness after the suicide of a client and the murder of a colleague, whose therapy group Willis proceeds to take over. He is distracted from his attempts at solving the crime by Jane March, a hottie half his age who he meets in a fender bender and with whom he is soon flopping around in a swimming pool. (Those of you wanting a glimpse of the full Willis may want to use your freeze-frame function here; George Costanza’s "shrinkage" argument may or may not come to mind.) She later cooks him a meal wearing an apron and nothing else; then they take a bath together and Willis runs his remote-control tank over her naked body. (No, that’s not a metaphor for something really dirty — I mean an actual remote-control tank.) For good measure, March also makes out with nympho patient Lesley Ann Warren before the big twist in which March is revealed as little Ricky, the sexually confused young man in Willis’s group. If any of this gets you excited, please seek immediate help. — Scott Von Doviak